SoundOut 2024 / 5

Then the second half of Saturday session 2.  First up an interesting session perhaps led by Jim Denley.  Unlike others, this was a series of "tunes", each with a theme or approach, seemingly prepared to be led by one or other performer.  It had me wondering if this was a CD launch!  Performers were Elizabeth Jigalin, Helen Svoboda, Jean-Sebastien Mariage, Jim Denley and Laurence Pike.  Feels variously changed and were led by or centred on instruments and instrumental techniques.  Thus I noted: rippling piano with distorted guitar; pining feel with guitar and brushes; bowed guitar with bass harmonics and unison vocals; busy frantic distorted guitar and slammed piano; rubber mallet on bass with damped guitar notes; harmonics, guitar e-bow, mallets on cymbals, bowed bass, sparse piano, flute vibrato, build to finale.  Fascinating, unexpected and well received.  Next was mainly electronics with projections performed by Hannah de Feyter, Danny Wild (Lowflung), Yichen Wang and Nicci Hayes.  Hannah had a viola but mostly played effects and presumably loops in the effects chain.  Danny played a complex looking suitcase of a synth and Yichen a tiny but surprisingly powerful (and costly) Teenage Engineering OP-1 synth.  The whole was electronica, groove and metallics with some effective projections behind.  Nice.  Then the Clayton Thomas Large Ensemble.  Rules, structure and guidance were discussed in another post.  Clayton introduced it as a political action as any group activity is (interesting thought) and highlighted the horror of Gaza and related and committed the performance to this stand.  It was an intelligent, thoughtful, quite radical and informed presentation.  Much admiration for that.  Then we played.  I stood centre with basses right and left wing, behind Miro so I was particularly well placed to luxuriate in a glorious tone and subtle melody.  This moved into our community improvs with rules and ultimately to a drone from Helen, a piano solo from Novak (again a stunner) against a growing crescendo of moving all-in drone until it dwarfed the piano and Clayton signalled a stop.  The whole was ~30-minutes as these sets are.  The solos from Miro and Novak were stunning, I felt the improv segment was better in practice but still OK, the crescendo was a stunner and very loud at the end.  The audience was small but the reception was strong.  So a success.  Much enjoyed.

Performers for set 4 were Elizabeth Jigalin (piano), Helen Svoboda (bass), Jean-Sebastien Mariage (guitar), Jim Denley (winds) and Laurence Pike (drums).  For set 5 were Hannah de Feyter (viola), Danny Wild (Lowflung) (synth), Yichen Wang (synth) and Nicci Hayes (projections).  Set 6 was the Large Ensemble led by Clayton Thomas (bass) and featuring Miroslav Bukovsky (trumpet), Helen Svoboda (bass) and Novak Minojlovic (piano).

SoundOut 2024 / 2

There were three more acts during the SoundOut Friday night session.  First was a very quirky outing with three performers playing occasional trumpet and flute but mostly various kids' toys.  All rattles and noises and shakers and whistles.  Backing this was a multimedia-cum-live drawing session projected behind.   The falling conga line of penguins was perhaps the peak of this experience, but an artistically quirky good time was had by all, performers and audience.  BTW, the mini amps were Marshall and Orange, although the sound was nothing like dirty rock.  Amusing.  performers were Elizabeth Jigallin, Ellen Kirkwood, Jodie Rottle and Nicci Haynes.  Then Kairos, another French international duo, this time combining electronics and oft-times nicely dirty Les Paul guitar.  Dotty punchy synth lines from a table of keyboards and one particularly strange controller, bowed guitar, some seriously nice phrasings, impressive sounds although I wondered where it was going or went.  Performers were Jean-Sebastian Mariage and Gwennaëlle Roulleau.  Then the final act, a quartet called Believe.  This was straight free jazz, fabulously articulate and expressive and informed with top skills, madly busy from the first notes but moving through a series of sections.  The performers were Clayton Thomas, Laurence Pike, Novak Manojkovic and Peter Farrer.  All great musos, but I have to single out Novak.  He's a pianist and piano is the whole orchestra in a box, but he could play it all.  I was blown out, by him and all.  And I don't always warm to free jazz.  It needs informed chops and some structure and immense listening and a love of dissonance, but then it can be exhilarating.  This was.

The quirky penguins outing was Elizabeth Jigallin (toys), Ellen Kirkwood (toys sometimes trumpet), Jodie Rottle (toys sometimes flute, piccolo) and Nicci Haynes (drawings, projections).  Kairos comprised  Jean-Sebastian Mariage (guitar) and Gwennaëlle Roulleau (electronics).  Believe comprised Clayton Thomas (bass), Laurence Pike (drums), Novak Manojkovic (piano) and Peter Farrer (alto, percussion).

Triosk tour Canberra

Triosk played to a full house at Hippo’s last night. How do I know? I was left out in the cold with a changing group of others. Given it was a cold night (predicted -4degC, and it clearly reached it) I didn’t hang around for long. On the other hand, Hippo’s is generous with its sound, and you can clearly hear the band from outside, so I got a good listen for ~30mins, even if not a view.

Triosk are Adrian Klumpes (keyboards/samples), Ben 'Donny' Waples (bass), Laurence Pike (drums). They are touring to publicise their new album. They have received great reviews in Australia and Europe. They are jazz trained and are talked about in the same breath as The Necks, so I expected a different, although jazz-influenced sound. They have also recorded a CD with Jan Jelinek of Germany (1+3+1), which was interestingly done over the Net, and toured Australia with Jan.

I heard a gentle, minimalist soundscape. The show started with screeching cymbals from a stick being dragged around a cymbal. Then a slow bass line, with a lovely, biting double bass tone. The other member was piano, playing regular patterns and minimal changes. The drums grew, and over the next few tunes were very busy, with the bass and piano holding steady. There were sounds or effects, I guess from the piano, and later, very high pitched notes bowed on the bass. The drums had lovely loose tones. They seemed to be detuned, so the stick sunk into the skin, and the snare drum was played infrequently, and mostly (at least what I heard) with the snare wires out. I know they perform with laptop/s, and there were some sounds I couldn’t identify – perhaps PC-based digital effects, or sampled sounds interwoven with the performance. Hard to tell without seeing them in performance. And the performance obviously demands a great level of listening between players, as every note counted hugely. What I heard was an intriguing, beautiful and spellbinding performance.

But it was cold, so I didn’t hang around. I hope they return or I can catch them another time. But for now, a picture of some die-hards outside Hippo’s has to suffice.